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There really hasn't been a worthwhile MMO since 2004.
Unintended
Member UncommonPosts: 98
I remember ruining the last year of my school when I was 15 because I was addicted to Planetside. It was all I ever talked about and I was so hooked on that game but, SOE then released that stupid lackluster expansion and killed it off in 2004 with BFRs. I was also addicted to SWG in 2003 but every patch SOE made seemed to make it worse. For me SWG was dead in 2004 because they kept messing with Jedi and ignoring the rest of the game. It had no content and instead they kept ruining everything cause they had no clue of how to run that game. They're just so out of touch, the fans could do a much better job at running that mess.
I was addicted to EVE Online as well but again CCP are clueless and can't seem to develop a UI that is fun to use. the game was so backwards and needed so much doing to it that it still hasn't gotten today. Instead they decided to ignore key features that I wanted and the fleet UI is still a cluster ****. Now it's just a mess of throw Capital ships at everything to win and the rules feel so inconsistent, where the devs help out their fave corps just because they are well known. Also things like one person being able to close a whole alliance is just so stupid... the game is just a mess because again CCP don't have a clue.
If you go back even further there was Everquest and Dark Age of Camelot and Ultima Online. All killed off again by stupid patches the community didn't want and it just seems the same thing is cropping up again and again. Just stupid developers who try to please everyone and don't think of the world it affects.
Finally WoW came along in 2004 and in 2005 it was killed off by Blizzard who decided to treat it like an Online game, rather than a virtual world. They released Battlegrounds and then all the great world PVP died with it. Suddenly the world was empty because everyone was in these instanced PVP zones. It got even worse when they let you enter them from anywhere and now they let you enter dungeons from anywhere with that Auto group tool. The game is just so easy though you can't feel special and all my friends have left because of that. They spent months getting their purples and now anyone can get them... not the way it should be.
So I've been waiting ever since WoW got killed off by Blizzard for a new MMO and nothing worthwhile has come. None of them feel like MMOs and they've just been dumbed down for casuals who don't even want to play them. MMOs should be online worlds and all they've become is towns with instances all around them, like Diablo.
Just sickens me that I've wasted 5 years of my life waiting for nothing because developers don't have a clue. All these people being paid millions and yet I could do a better job. Star Wars Galaxies had the right idea, it just wasn't pulled off because SOE are clueless.
Humph...
On the horizon what is there? there's SWTOR but they've made it perfectly clear they aren't interested in the hardcore, so I expect a WoW clone but with linear class quests.
I think gaming really is dead to me now, it has all gone down hill since this casual gamer craze and all the good PC franchises went to console.
[Mod Edit]
Comments
I have to add that all I ever get told to do is play Darkfall or something. It's like these titles made by developers with next to no money always turn out bad. They're always missing the lore and the art style that draws me into the world and makes me care about my character. It has to be a big budget developer that makes a more hardcore game that feels like a real online world.
2003, actually. Btw, why do you have something against FF just because it's Japanese? FFXI is the same kind of MMo as EQ and DaoC.
Welcome to the world of gaming
While I agree with you that games in the past 3-5 years have not been great... it has alot to do with the person that plays the games. Playing games is a learning curve and when you start to realise that noone is bringing anything new - and you have discovered the buisness side of things.. or how its more up to the devs how op or how nerfed you feel than anything else... then you have gone pretty much through it all. Time to return to real ife if you have some !!
But ... dont think that there isn't another 15 year old that just got hooked up by some game... Thats what gaming is all about.
2010 is the sandbox year. We got a few good upcoming releases.. Earthrise for example, sounds like a new good sandbox game, with a player driven world and economy driven like EVE: I'm sure it will suceed, maybe even be THE game of 2010 that will be like UO and be really popular. Who knows, but im so SURE that i will almost bet on, that one of the releases in 2010 will be a game worth playing
Untill then, I will stick to my PS3!
mmo wise you are right op!
but if we check mo wise there are some:wow,guildwars
Have you considered Wurm online? It might not look good, but it has all those things you're talking about, a persistent world based on player interaction(Better, every house, road and fence is made by players). The dev(Single person I believe, and will assume for the rest of this post) is not trying to please everyone, as is evident when a big no-pvp server was changed to be pvp allowed.
Player housing is in, as every building is made by players anyway. It's like EvE in a fantasy world, except there is one dev that actually knows what way he's taking the game. Graphics and animation are volunteer work I think.(Again, unsure) I find it sad that a 1-man team can make player housing while big budget teams can't manage to fit it in.
And it has hardcore parts, a starting newbie can most likely not take down a goblin on his own, and buildings need to be maintained(Easier then it sounds). Combat may not be the game's focus, but it still manages to be a good game. If you find a good group to play with, you can consider it to be like building your own town in a big persistent world where others can also build their own towns.
It's not quite a finished game, but it has a free option for just living on the tutorial island, so it may be worth a try. Many new things will be added over time.
http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/game/129
FFXI,UO and Everquest all came before the hype mahcine and they were all better mmos but yeah, it has been a long time since we had a quality mmo.
I think Planetside was the best MMO I have ever played, i thought it was the massive scale PvP i loved about it, so i tried WoW, WAR Aion, but its not really the massive PvP i loved in Planetside because I did enjoy small fights too. it was the core design of the game, it was that there we no stats, gear you had to grind to be awesome. I could play 1 character, and I could change it to anything I liked, I originally played it as an infiltrator, then as Heavy footzerg infantry, max whore, when allround killwhore and i could have the option to be a hacker, healer if i wanted to.
But what i also liked about Planetside was the speed of it and that it was classless, in planetside I could run into a CC with a jackhammer kill the 6 guys defending and resecuire the base solo. Not a chance to do anything like that in a fantasy game because i would be stunlocked, CCed and just weared down.
Also, i liked 3 faction PvP because its adds abit of diversity to the fights, warhammer its just same old same old day in day out there was what like 18 keeps in warhammer with a spwnpawn on eachside of the maps, theres no flow to battle, its boring.
Checkout this shit:
http://future-crew.net/images/skyexile/3way..jpg
You have purple backhacking red to the north at ekera and moving to chunu with a small skirmish there. you have NC heading south trying to cross the bridge but getting cleaned up by the looks of it on the otherside. then you have the TR and NC duking it out between bombazi and nzame and thats jsut on one continent, you dont see anything like that in warhamemr because you have 2 keeps per map *yawn*
So what im personally looking for is a classless game, with world pvp, skill based, preferably scifi and with 3 faction, factional pvp. There is only one game being made that meets those requirments:
http://us.jumpgateevolution.com/
It is lacking updates from developers on the development on the game, but it does apear they're still working on it, just keeping a low profile about it. sofar it looks like everything im looking for, im not sure howmany bases they're planing to have per sector, but i hope its serveral like planetside.
anything you read on instanced pvp is also out of date, battlespace has been scrapped and is now nothing more than Planetside virtual reality.
The game does look abit more indepth than planetside, it will have gear more like your traddinal RPG, but its still using your mouse to aim and wasd to control your ship. so all that gear is worthless if you cant hit anything.
Im not sure the game willbe hardcore with severe death penalties, there willbe reapir bills and a flyback. so more like planetside than anything...+ the repair bills.
but yea, im liking the looks of it.
SKYeXile
TRF - GM - GW2, PS2, WAR, AION, Rift, WoW, WOT....etc...
Future Crew - High Council. Planetside 1 & 2.
LOL !
The OP is obviously a very talented complainer !
Everything is bad ! Yay !
Agreed, there hasn't been a truly good new MMORPG for years, and most of the ones that were good:
1.) have been ruined by the developers (e.g., SWG, UO [Trammel])
2.) have simply declined and stagnated with age (e.g., AO)
3.) are still good, but I eventually had enough of them (e.g., EVE, FFXI)
4.) shut down and/or suffered an unfortunate calamity (e.g., Ryzom*)
5.) are plagued by bots and exploiters to the point of not being fun (e.g., Lineage 2)
...And so on and so forth. I've tried games like WoW, WAR and GW, but I couldn't stick with them for more than a few months before becoming disinterested and/or disgruntled. I've also tried a great many other MMORPGs over the years, and none of them have really done it for me.
Overall, EVE and FFXI are the only two MMORPGs for which I still have a great deal of respect. I'm far too fed up with them (due to years of playing them) to want to go back, but they were good then and they're good now. Hardcore as a sumbitch, too.
* I know Ryzom has been back in action for a while now, but the community that used to exist was greatly shaken up and has been substantially reduced — my entire guild moved on to other games and stayed gone, for instance. Anyway, it's just an example.
Currently Playing: EVE Online
Retired From: UO, FFXI, AO, SWG, Ryzom, GW, WoW, WAR
what the fuck?
the official MMORPG.com deadhead
As always I disagree with this topic.
I played and enjoyed mmos back then and I'm still doing so now. Every time I see these topics it makes me think that some are just more burned out on the genre than anything else.
It is dissappointing the amount of quality mmos that have come out over the years considering how many have launched but there are still some out there worth the time and provide entertainment.
1. For god's sake mmo gamers, enough with the analogies. They're unnecessary and your comparisons are terrible, dissimilar, and illogical.
2. To posters feeling the need to state how f2p really isn't f2p: Players understand the concept. You aren't privy to some secret the rest are missing. You're embarrassing yourself.
3. Yes, Cpt. Obvious, we're not industry experts. Now run along and let the big people use the forums for their purpose.
LOTRO,Eve, Ryzom, DDOU.....There is actually a decently long list here.
Eve launched in 2003.
"EVE is likely the best MMORPG that you've never really understood or played" - Kyleran
I agree with you OP. There haven't been a wortwhile MMORPG released in a good while now and probably wont be in another good while until the genre reaches a crisis.
But you really cant blame the devs, they like many others are in this to make money and aslong as they make more money creating games like AoC and WAR than Darkfall then that is what will be produced. Simple supply and demand logic.
The moment the MMOG genre started to reach the masses is the moment it turned into a mass produced market with clones and look alikes with zero innovation. What needs to happen is for a niche sub-genre to grow where MMOGs are yet again virtual worlds and not virtual themeparks. Sadly the only companies that tries that are amateurs like Starvault and what-their-name-is which made Darkfall. They simply dont have the skills to create a quality MMOG and you really cant put the future of the MMOGs in their hands.
We need a talented team with a vision to rise up to the occasion and create an immersive, fun, challenging virtual WORLD, not mor themeparks and instanced drivel.
My gaming blog
It's weird that people think like this. I mean I just don't get the mindset. Sure, if you had said 'there isn't any MMO released since 2004 that is as good as World of Warcraft' then you would be right. However there are quite a few very good games that have come out since then. Maybe they aren't all as all encompasing as the industry behemoth that is WoW, but they are perfectly good, well featured andinteresting games that can hold your attention for X months.
Lotro, AoC and Aion are all good examples, WAR probably too (although I fear EA have given up on it), champions and STO behind that and even the indies of Ryzom and Fallen Earth types are decent and can command a good niche audience. Hell, even the games you could genuinely claim to be poor like Darkfall still have some fans.
No one will ever make a game like WoW ever again, not even Bioware / Lucas (personal opinion), unless they are willing to spend several hundred milllion dollars to replicate the four or five years of content since that game launched as well.
None of that means though that the games can't give us pretty decent entertainment. I have played several months of AoC, Fallen Earth, Aion and Champions Online in the last year, and enjoyed the time. When I bore, which you always do, I move on, and later come back sometimes.
I agree with the OP, with one or two exceptions.
Eve is a decent release, surely something innovative and different, even if I find it boring.
And for the list of games that came close...
Vanguard was almost worthwhile, Fallen Earth was fairly unique and good, and Darkfall came close.
But that's about it. WoW was the death knell for the virtual world style MMOs from big budget companies. Though another thing I disagree with the OP about, I don't think vanilla WoW was any better. I played vanilla WoW, and never logged in again, felt just like a dumb version of EverQuest, why play that when I could still just play EverQuest?
I don't see the industry ever recovering, especially with that SWTOR "MMO" coming down the pipeline. There are no big budget, big name MMOs coming that try to do the old style of MMOs. This is the first year in my life where I haven't been looking forward to/hoping for some MMO, cause they all look bad.
problem is, for that to happen, that team also need the small issue of having half a decade and tens, if not hundreds, of millions of dollars to make it happen or it will also just be cast aside as not having sufficient production values as the industry leader. It is simply the fact that these days games in this genre costs millions upon millions of dollars to develop, and once you get up to those budgets the investors / company / producers want return on investment and that means more mainstream features.
If you go indie with a small budget, that allows you to go niche and maybe create a more innovative world but you simply won't be able to make the production values match, and then, viscious circle time, players disgreagd you as indie or amateur.
It's a viscious circle that we players made by deciding that more of us like the wow style, and that didnt even start with wow, it started with EQ being way more popular than UO. It's not as if the MMO companies decided this themselves, our behavior lead them here!
LotRO was one of the biggest disappointments in gaming. It was advertised for 3 years as being an open virtual world, that you could live in, sticking heavy to the lore. Then about 9 months from launch, Turbine renamed it to Lord of the Rings Online, axed about 3/4 of the features, and made it a WoW clone. A very nice WoW clone, but still a WoW clone. They wanted to focus more on instances, and combat. Too bad the combat system was horrible.
AoC was an explosive failure. Nothing was finished past the first 20 tutorial levels, almost nothing worked, and the toted combat system got reduced down from 8 directions to 3, because the WoW players in beta thought it was too hard. The company publishing AoC went bankrupt, and many developers were fired. Real good game.
Aion is just a korean mesh of Lineage and WoW, with no real innovations. Some tacked on half assed DAoC style PvP, but falling short.
WAR was a massive failure because again, they tried to mix WoW and DAoC, and didn't hit the good points of either. But they did contribute public quests, thank god, someone innovated SOMETHING in the 5 years since WoW launch.
Champions and STO were both overly instanced mostly singleplayer/lobby MMOs. Those don't even count.
And it all came about because of WoW.
what the fuck?
He's implying that over instanced, single player focused, hand holding linear games like WoW and Guildwars aren't real MMOs in terms of how the title was used to describe virtual world social MMOs like EverQuest and Ultima Online.
And he'd be right. There is a very VERY clear difference.
LotRO was one of the biggest disappointments in gaming. It was advertised for 3 years as being an open virtual world, that you could live in, sticking heavy to the lore. Then about 9 months from launch, Turbine renamed it to Lord of the Rings Online, axed about 3/4 of the features, and made it a WoW clone. A very nice WoW clone, but still a WoW clone. They wanted to focus more on instances, and combat. Too bad the combat system was horrible.
AoC was an explosive failure. Nothing was finished past the first 20 tutorial levels, almost nothing worked, and the toted combat system got reduced down from 8 directions to 3, because the WoW players in beta thought it was too hard. The company publishing AoC went bankrupt, and many developers were fired. Real good game.
Aion is just a korean mesh of Lineage and WoW, with no real innovations. Some tacked on half assed DAoC style PvP, but falling short.
WAR was a massive failure because again, they tried to mix WoW and DAoC, and didn't hit the good points of either. But they did contribute public quests, thank god, someone innovated SOMETHING in the 5 years since WoW launch.
Champions and STO were both overly instanced mostly singleplayer/lobby MMOs. Those don't even count.
And it all came about because of WoW.
Wrong. It all came about beause of bad developers and publishers. Place blame where its due.
If you stand VERY still, and close your eyes, after a minute you can actually FEEL the universe revolving around PvP.
LotRO was one of the biggest disappointments in gaming. It was advertised for 3 years as being an open virtual world, that you could live in, sticking heavy to the lore. Then about 9 months from launch, Turbine renamed it to Lord of the Rings Online, axed about 3/4 of the features, and made it a WoW clone. A very nice WoW clone, but still a WoW clone. They wanted to focus more on instances, and combat. Too bad the combat system was horrible.
AoC was an explosive failure. Nothing was finished past the first 20 tutorial levels, almost nothing worked, and the toted combat system got reduced down from 8 directions to 3, because the WoW players in beta thought it was too hard. The company publishing AoC went bankrupt, and many developers were fired. Real good game.
Aion is just a korean mesh of Lineage and WoW, with no real innovations. Some tacked on half assed DAoC style PvP, but falling short.
WAR was a massive failure because again, they tried to mix WoW and DAoC, and didn't hit the good points of either. But they did contribute public quests, thank god, someone innovated SOMETHING in the 5 years since WoW launch.
Champions and STO were both overly instanced mostly singleplayer/lobby MMOs. Those don't even count.
And it all came about because of WoW.
Wrong. It all came about beause of bad developers and publishers. Place blame where its due.
If WoW had never existed, there would have been no one to try to copy. Why should the other publishers innovate, if WoW is massively successful, without inventing a single unique idea or feature? WoW is living proof people buy rehashed stuff. And, foolish businessmen that don't understand the WoW demographic doesn't play MMOs, so trying to make new ones to appeal to the WoW crowd, who probably don't even know the genre exists, is a bad idea when the rest of us are waiting for another GOOD MMO like EQ, DAoC, or AC
LotRO was one of the biggest disappointments in gaming. It was advertised for 3 years as being an open virtual world, that you could live in, sticking heavy to the lore. Then about 9 months from launch, Turbine renamed it to Lord of the Rings Online, axed about 3/4 of the features, and made it a WoW clone. A very nice WoW clone, but still a WoW clone. They wanted to focus more on instances, and combat. Too bad the combat system was horrible.
AoC was an explosive failure. Nothing was finished past the first 20 tutorial levels, almost nothing worked, and the toted combat system got reduced down from 8 directions to 3, because the WoW players in beta thought it was too hard. The company publishing AoC went bankrupt, and many developers were fired. Real good game.
Aion is just a korean mesh of Lineage and WoW, with no real innovations. Some tacked on half assed DAoC style PvP, but falling short.
WAR was a massive failure because again, they tried to mix WoW and DAoC, and didn't hit the good points of either. But they did contribute public quests, thank god, someone innovated SOMETHING in the 5 years since WoW launch.
Champions and STO were both overly instanced mostly singleplayer/lobby MMOs. Those don't even count.
And it all came about because of WoW.
Wrong. It all came about beause of bad developers and publishers. Place blame where its due.
Not really, they were just making the games that the majority of us wanted. If you are a fan of open world, open ended, skill based design you just have to face the reality that you are in a minority (and some may argue a very small minority)
What you want also isn't technically possible yet, at least not to the standards that you have grown to enjoy in WoW. No-one can make the type of game you would be happy with, because you both want the production value of WoW (which only one, maybe two, companies in the world have the power to make) and the technology to make an open world with a far higher volume of players than any of your 'rose tinted glasses' great games actually supported (I played both UO, EQ, EVE early and many others and I also remember the technical lag and population issue when any more than a couple of dozen players met up (remeber the old EQ events
). I think many of us old timers suffer from that rose tinted glasses syndrom when we remember the good parts (which were great, dont get me wrong) but dont remember the bad parts.
I have seen no evidence that the technology is there yet to make a game as detailed as we get these days without instancing.
Also most players simply don't like it! They want fast travel, they want to not have to trek around endlessly as we put up with many moons ago, and can do again in games like Fallen Earth.
So I don't see the point in holding it against MMO companies when they make good solid, enjoyable MMOs in the bracket below the industry leader.
I can have fun in most of them, and that's what matters to me. Of course it's all subjective, I just fear that what you want from what you describe just isn't even possible, let alone likely, anytime in the near future (five to ten years)
LotRO was one of the biggest disappointments in gaming. It was advertised for 3 years as being an open virtual world, that you could live in, sticking heavy to the lore. Then about 9 months from launch, Turbine renamed it to Lord of the Rings Online, axed about 3/4 of the features, and made it a WoW clone. A very nice WoW clone, but still a WoW clone. They wanted to focus more on instances, and combat. Too bad the combat system was horrible.
AoC was an explosive failure. Nothing was finished past the first 20 tutorial levels, almost nothing worked, and the toted combat system got reduced down from 8 directions to 3, because the WoW players in beta thought it was too hard. The company publishing AoC went bankrupt, and many developers were fired. Real good game.
Aion is just a korean mesh of Lineage and WoW, with no real innovations. Some tacked on half assed DAoC style PvP, but falling short.
WAR was a massive failure because again, they tried to mix WoW and DAoC, and didn't hit the good points of either. But they did contribute public quests, thank god, someone innovated SOMETHING in the 5 years since WoW launch.
Champions and STO were both overly instanced mostly singleplayer/lobby MMOs. Those don't even count.
And it all came about because of WoW.
Wrong. It all came about beause of bad developers and publishers. Place blame where its due.
Not really, they were just making the games that the majority of us wanted. If you are a fan of open world, open ended, skill based design you just have to face the reality that you are in a minority (and some may argue a very small minority)
Before WoW came along, that "small minority" was enough to make companies and people rich. EverQuest had what, 600,000 subscribers? Dark Age of Camelot had 500,000? That's better than most MMOs today. And it took them less money to make, and less people. DAoC was made with THIRTY people, and it STILL has features that put modern day MMOs to shame.
Saying it's not possible, or companies can't make money aiming at the real MMORPG players, is just naive foolishness. Companies just don't want to try, because older MMOs take some design and balance skill.